Tag: "music"

Pitchfork: When it was originally misreported that Vulnicura was produced by Arca, instead of co-produced by you and Arca, it reminded me of the Joni Mitchell quote from the height of her fame about how whichever man was in the room with her got credit for her genius.

B: Yeah, I didn’t want to talk about that kind of thing for 10 years, but then I thought, “You’re a coward if you don’t stand up. Not for you, but for women. Say something.” So around 2006, I put something on my website where I cleared something up, because it’d been online so many times that it was becoming a fact. It wasn’t just one journalist getting it wrong, everybody was getting it wrong. I’ve done music for, what, 30 years? I’ve been in the studio since I was 11; Alejandro had never done an album when I worked with him. He wanted to putting something on his own Twitter, just to say it’s co-produced. I said, “No, we’re never going to win this battle. Let’s just leave it.” But he insisted. I’ve sometimes thought about releasing a map of all my albums and just making it clear who did what. But it always comes across as so defensive that, like, it’s pathetic. I could obviously talk about this for a long time. [laughs]

Pitchfork: The world has a difficult time with the female auteur.

B: I have nothing against Kanye West. Help me with this—I’m not dissing him—this is about how people talk about him. With the last album he did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second. If whatever I’m saying to you now helps women, I’m up for saying it. For example, I did 80% of the beats on Vespertine and it took me three years to work on that album, because it was all microbeats—it was like doing a huge embroidery piece. Matmos came in the last two weeks and added percussion on top of the songs, but they didn’t do any of the main parts, and they are credited everywhere as having done the whole album. [Matmos’] Drew [Daniel] is a close friend of mine, and in every single interview he did, he corrected it. And they don’t even listen to him. It really is strange.

It’s hardly surprising but it’s terrible. And these things aren’t just restricted to music journalists, but I think are pretty ingrained in the popular imagination, albeit the popular imagination of people who care this deeply about albums, which is not all that many people.

I’m not going to make any claims to a “Best of” list for 2014 because there are too many albums out there and my budget is too small to buy very many of them. But here are some 2014 albums I liked, in the order I thought of them. I’m not providing much commentary because I suck at writing about music.

St. Vincent, St. Vincent
My album of the year.

Wussy, Attica!
Of course.

Drive-by Truckers, English Oceans
Not one of their greatest albums, but that still leaves it as quite good.

Tangerine, Behemoth!
A little indie pop band out of Seattle that I heard on KEXP and just thought were a lot of fun.

Angaleena Presley, American Middle Class
A country album actually about class. Huh. My only criticism is that the linked song below, in its recorded version, opens with Presley’s father talking about working in the coal mines. That’s not middle class. That’s working class. Even in an album about class, it always has to be about the middle class. If coal mining isn’t working class, what is? Well, it’s black people on welfare, which is the subtext of this song and it’s frustrating. This country sometimes. Good album though.

Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
Just heard this for the first time. Maybe the best country album of the year. Very Waylon.

Jerry Lee Lewis, The Knox Phillips Sessions
Archival release of the year. Jerry Lee recorded this in the late 70s with Sam Phillips’ son. “Bad Leroy Brown” is a really stupid song. Unless The Killer makes it about himself. Then it’s insane.

It’s a bit hard to believe that Wussy was featured on CBS. But so they were, including an interview about how an acclaimed rock band can be acclaimed but make absolutely no money, meaning everyone has to work day jobs. Here’s the interview:

I had the occasion to have a slightly extended weekend thanks to giving a midterm and thus drove out to the far distant school where my wife teaches. In my world, that means listening to a lot of music. I know there are good podcasts out there. But none of them are as good as a good album. So I don’t listen to them. Instead, I listen to albums. And usually full length albums as opposed to what the kids these days call “playlists” what with their baggy jeans and the like.

So, on the way out there, I listened to the following:

Wooley/Rempis/Niggenkemper/Corsano, From Wolves to Whales
Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight
Akira Sakata & Chikamorachi, Friendly Pants
L7, Bricks Are Heavy
Wussy, Attica
V/A, Festival in the Desert (a collection of live recordings from the annual festival in Timbuktu, although I don’t know if it still going on with the whole violence and all)
Roky Erickson, The Evil One
Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, Disc 3
Bill Callahan, Woke on a Whaleheart
Bruce Cockburn, High Winds White Sky
Bonnie Prince Billy, Ease Down the Road
Sonny Rollins, Live at the Village Vanguard, Volume 2

And driving back today, here was my playlist:

Ralph Stanley, Classic Stanley Disc 1
Osborne Brothers, From Rocky Top to Muddy Bottom
Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
Herbie Hancock, Live September 1973 (some radio show recording a friend gave me years ago. As I attempt to reconstruct my music collection following the theft, I am really glad I burned this on a CD at some point)
Bill Callahan, Apocalypse
Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
White Stripes, Elephant
Mates of State, Mountaintops
Flying Burrito Brothers, Farther Along: The Best of the Flying Burrito Brothers
Bill Frisell, The Intercontinentals
Townes Van Zandt, Townes Van Zandt
Irving Fields, Bagels and Bongos

I spent my Halloween evening in New Haven, seeing the legendary saxophonist Joe McPhee play with drummer Chris Corsano and cellist Daniel Levin at Firehouse 12. This was amazing and someone I never thought I’d get to see live. I’ve been listening to McPhee for years, especially his groundbreaking early albums like Nation Time and Trinity. This is as close to an approximation as I can get on YouTube, albeit Evan Parker gives a very different dynamic than a cellist. Technically, it was also Levin’s trio. Firehouse 12 is also an outstanding space, especially when compared to the terrible space (albeit necessary and with great shows!) that is John Zorn’s Stone on the Lower East Side. Lower rents and all that.

A note about the merchandise table. When I go to a show like this, I want to support the cause by buying a CD or two. That’s especially true at a jazz show because CDs are released on so many tiny labels that I would never hear of otherwise. But at both the Jon Dee Graham show I went to on Wednesday and this, the merch table was not exactly a priority of the musicians. Graham was talking about his CDs for sale and then immediately after the show went outside to smoke cigarettes for at least 15 minutes. I waited around that long and then couldn’t wait any longer as I had a 45 minute drive ahead of me. Last night, only Corsano hung around after the first show (I really couldn’t stay for the second as it is 100 miles from New Haven to Providence and I was tired enough when I got back to RI as it was). McPhee and Levin went to have a drink downstairs. The problem here was that McPhee hadn’t even bothered to put his music out for sale and Corsano had no idea how much Levin was selling his albums for. So I bought a couple pieces Corsano was on and that’s great–I am really excited to listen to them. But you’d like to think there’d be a bit more of a concerted effort to actually sell this stuff.

Last night, I went to see the great Jon Dee Graham at a bar in Newport, Rhode Island. I used to see Graham all the time when I lived in Austin. The gravelly-voiced songwriter is maybe the not greatest singer in the world but he is witty and funny and cranky and writes some outstanding songs. Soon after I left Texas, Graham was driving home to Austin from a show in Dallas, fell asleep, wrecked his car, and nearly died. But he’s back, albeit with about 50 more pounds on him than he had a few years ago. What this show was for me was a lesson in the difficulties of being a lifer on the road. This bar is an excellent beer bar, one of the best in Rhode Island. It was also way, way too loud for a show like this because there was no cover and most of the people didn’t care. This was just background music for them. When you are playing an acoustic guitar, that has to be incredibly frustrating and indeed it was for Graham, even though he’s probably played this kind of show 200 times. Still, he soldiered on and as the people who didn’t care about the music petered out, things got better for him and for the show. It wasn’t the same as seeing him on Wednesday night at the Continental Club performing before James McMurtry’s famed midnight sets, but it was as good as it’s going to get in Rhode Island.

Below is a clip of his most famous song. Mike June, with whom I was unfamiliar, accompanies him here. He also opened last night to a crowd that cared even less and was even louder than when Jon Dee played.

Ebola causes you to leak fluids from your body’s orifices and bleed internally until your body starts to slowly shut down. Then you die from a combination of low blood-pressure and organ failure. If you have the misfortune of being an American who catches this vile disease, the media will ruthlessly invade your privacy and reveal every minute detail of your life to the public. This is a horrid fate for anyone unfortunate enough to catch this terrible malady.

And I would gladly endure it all so long as I never again have to suffer the experience of sitting seven rows back from the stage while Florida-Georgia Line and Jason Aldean gleefully danced on the grave of one of the most purely American forms of art to the tune of cheers from 9,999 very intoxicated people.

…

Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line looks like country music’s take on Scott Stapp, with his flowing hair and affinity for bare skin and crosses. While on stage he and Brian Kelley and the rest of the band all sported one of their own band’s T-shirts. Yes, they’re an entire band of “that guys.” Hubbard also handled most of the band’s singing duties, including occasionally dropping into a rap-like cadence while Kelley stood around playfully strumming an acoustic guitar that’s nowhere to be heard in the mix. Congrats bro-country, you have your Limp Bizkit.

Florida-Georgia Bizkit’s performance came to a giant apex of overtly stitched denim, explosions and smoke when the band launched into their current hit song “Dirt.” This is not said lightly, but “Dirt” might be the single worst song to be a No. 1 hit in the history of country music, though we’re about 5 years away from Axl Rose going country in a cash grab. Accept it, America: We’re getting a pedal-steel version of “Patience” and the country audience is gonna eat it up.

“Dirt” contains lyrics like “We all came from it” and “Build your corn field, whiskey bonfires on it” and for the love of everything I swear it’s like the people who love these songs don’t realize that none of them are actually farmers. It took everything in me to not turn to the dad sporting Puma branded golf gear and point out that driving a truck does not autocratically make one the Marlboro Man. Oh, and the band played “Dirt” twice just in case you were wondering how hard they were pushing the single.

Congratulations Justin Moore and Outlaws Like Me, you’re officially off the hot seat. Because right here, right now, I am unilaterally declaring that Florida Georgia Line’s new album Anything Goes is the worst album ever released in the history of country music. Ever. Including Florida Georgia Line’s first album Here’s To The Good Times, including anything else you can muster from the mainstream, including a 4-track recording made by a head trauma victim in a walk-in closet with a Casiotone keyboard and an out-of-tune banjo. Anything Goes can slay all comers when it comes to its heretofore unattainable degree of peerless suckitude.

In a word, this album is bullshit. Never before has such a refined collection of strident clichés been concentrated in one insidious mass. Never before have the lyrics to an album evidenced such narrowcasted pseudo-mindless incoherent drivel. Never before have such disparate and diseased influences been married so haphazardly in a profound vacuum of taste, and never have all of these atrocities been platooned together to be proffered to the public without someone, anyone with any bit of conscience and in a position of power putting a stop to this poisoning of the listening public.

Shiny objects and fire also seem to excite and distract Florida Georgia Line and fill them with a profound sense of wonder, and so soliloquies to these things also show up occasionally, as does the word “good.” They really like that word.

That verse pretty much sums up this entire album. And no, these are not lyrics to the song that is actually titled “Good Good.”

Florida Georgia Line is serving the same role for music critics as Guy Fieri does for food critics: as the prime example of why we can’t have nice things. Of course, the people who like Florida Georgia Line and Fieri, who I basically assume are the exact same people, don’t care. They are happy to spend $25 on a terrible burger covered with Guy’s Fiery Awesome Sauce and then drink 13 Michelob Ultras while listening to the worst music this nation has ever produced, a genre about trucks and rural life and being tough for a bunch of people who live in Round Rock or Cobb County who wouldn’t know corn from wheat or a bulldozer from a combine.

And is it my role to be a snob and look down on these people? Yes. Yes it is.

It’s a bit difficult to come back to active blogging after the fundraising campaign for my stolen computers and–far, far worse–the lost documents for my book. At least I had submitted the thing already so even if I have significant revisions, it’s not like I have to start the whole project over. But still, it’s basically the worst thing ever. It’s also the 5th certifiable catastrophe to happen to me since I moved to Rhode Island, which is just bizarre. Luckily none of those things have resulted in injury.

I confess that I wasn’t very comfortable with being the center of a fundraising campaign. I am after all pretty Protestant about my relations with the rest of the world and while I totally support fundraising for others, for myself, it’s hard. So I do very much appreciate the donations. Basically, it will allow me to buy a new computer–a machine that will never be in the same place as my office computer so that the same calamity can never happen again–and some adaptators, the purchase of cloud space, etc. I know some people who don’t use Paypal were interested in an address and you can send it to my work address here. I think that’s enough about all of that except to say that your generosity in helping me out of a horrible situation is greatly appreciated and won’t be forgotten anytime soon. Anything additional would be used to get me back to the West for those sources. And you are all too nice to me. OK, enough of beating this dead horse.

Anyway, now that my life is starting to reorder itself a bit, I should be able to get back to blogging more or less at my regular pace (although I do have a conference most of next week). To start that process and connect it to my perils, I found this piece about too much music interesting because I’ve been feeling that myself lately. I didn’t know it would be possible to have too much music and I guess it isn’t. But because I had so much music (and so much lost although not all of it because I never got rid of my old CDs + stuff on the itunes cloud + some favorites I had burned onto a CD to play in my car) I realized I was struggling to connect to most of it. There was the occasional thing that broke through–Wussy, Frank Ocean, Mary Halvorson, Mates of State, realizing after many years of not hearing them how amazing L7 was–but mostly I’d listen to something a few times and then it would fade into the background. This isn’t so good. Over the past week, with my far more limited available music, I’ve actually been enjoying it more because it’s all stuff I love.

That doesn’t mean I’m not actively seeking to reconstruct my collection. But I think this is a good time to really edit the heck out of it. My policy in the past was to basically keep everything I ever acquired unless I really hated it. But do I really need the Frank Zappa live tracks I picked up 20 years ago in college? No, most of them aren’t very good. I’ll keep a few that I still like. Or all the mediocrities I took flyers on over the years? Probably not. Or even the discs upon discs of Appalachian music from the 20s with all the poor recording quality that implies, even though I actually like that stuff. On the other hand, I might take the opportunity to really invest in more jazz albums from the 40s-mid 60s. I’ve been into avant-garde jazz since I started listening to the genre, often to the expense of the earlier periods.

And in any case, actually listening to the 100 or so albums I most love over and over again, is actually a really good thing to do.